Fractured
by Curt Kenobi
Summary: He doesn't go to Lisa, at least not right away. No, there's no way, and there's too much that he doesn't want to face that's coming up on him anyway.  post-5.22, pre-S6


**Title: **Fractured

**Author:** Curt Kenobi

**Fandom: **Supernatural {post-'Swan Song' 5x22}

**Genre/Warnings: **Angst! This is canon-ish, but leads to AU/AR – canon-change. Also, Gen for this, but a lead-in to Dean/Cas preslash? (You'd have to have ultrapowered slash goggles to see it in this.)

**Summary:** post-'Swan Song' – Dean doesn't go to Lisa, at least not right away. No, there's too much that he doesn't want to face that's coming up on him anyway.

**Rating: **T/PG-13 (cos Dean's got a mouth like mine)

**Disclaimer:**Supernatural's all Kripke's fanboy dream…I'm just a fanboi of his. I make no money, don't sue – I'm really beyond poor.

**A/N: **So this is my first foray into _Supernatural_. Hopefully not too bad of a thing. :) It's a standalone, but I plan to follow it up, so technically it's Instalment I. The next part is where all the AU-ness comes in.

* * *

—_I_—_can't_—_get_—_any_—_l__ower_—_/_—_I_—_can't_—_find_—_all_—_the_—_pieces_—_to_—_my_—_broken_—_life_—

* * *

He doesn't go to Lisa. Well, at least not right away; there is _no_ way. No freakin' way. He can't bring himself to go to her door, see her big brown sympathetic eyes, or suffer the comforting embraces and words and patient hospitality she's sure to show. As much as he wants to do what was asked of him – wants so bad, just so he's done something right by— But he can't. And it'll be some time coming 'til he will. (If he can.)

He doesn't know. Isn't sure. …_Nothing_ makes sense anymore. Maybe shit never really had, but it sure as hell doesn't now.

"_Sure as hell…_"

Hmph.

But anyways, he had said goodbye to Bobby – had felt the word choke like "I'm sorry" as he forced it out. Bobby understood, though. Let it slide. Dean is now off the hook…and he's heading off the rez. It's inevitable, really, and Bobby knows. Bobby always freakin' knows. Of course, it's the default setting for Winchester coping: Sam did about the same thing, not so terribly long ago. John Winchester had done it until his end. _Run so the shit – the hurt can't catch you. _So Bobby had let him go – let him go with a tight hug and an "If you ever need anything, son…" and no more.

Dean had smiled tightly, more a pull of lips across his teeth. The offer was there, in the air. Like to stay that way, like so many things. …Only certain thing in this fucked up – oh, but saved from total apocalypse, thanks to the Winchesters – world, it seemed was his baby, and even she's a blessing and a curse.

Cas is fuckin' shitty at goodbyes. It shouldn't be a surprise – especially with the reinstatement and all – but it _is_ a bitch. Castiel's about – no, _is _(was?) the only real friend Dean Winchester's ever had. The kind of person he could count on, surprisingly – could talk to (even if he sometimes was like a freaking brick wall, or didn't always get Dean's expressions) – but also, could trust, who wasn't family, like Sam and Bobby, Ellen…Jo. _Shit. _…Cas was around and went through a lot with Dean – _for_ Dean, if he feels up to admitting it. But Cas is an Angel again (capital letter and all) and feels the need to be Honorary Heavenly Sheriff…and vanish when the moment got heavy. Leave Dean alone with his deep thinky-thoughts that really are near the last things he wants on his mind.

(Left when Deans _needs_ a friend – _his _friend, even if Dean believes he just wants to be left right the fuck alone. For good.)

He wants _nothing _on his mind. Right now. Or ever – ever would be a great deal. No fuckin' Castiel, Angel of the Lord, not Bobby, not a single goddamned thing, not a fucking thought, definitely not—

It isn't going to go his way, is it? Why'd he ever expect it to?

So Dean forces blankness on himself. Makes his mind a space of white noise as he drives, alone. Memories and thoughts try and invade, and he forces them away, bleaches and smudges them, tossing them back toward his broken mental lockbox. He wants to flip on the radio, maybe even rustle up a cassette. Drown the onslaught with Led Zep, or have Metallica pound them into submission, but simultaneously the idea of hearing it makes his stomach knot and twist, burn. He keeps his eyes instead firmly on the road, as much as he can, trying not to glance at the dial, or the gleam of the chucked iPod dock in the passenger floorboard. _Still there after all this time…._ _Still there even when— _He watches the road. The asphalt is monotonous, blank – it doesn't tell a story, just an open canvas for whatever happens, pointing forward, not back; it doesn't hold memories he wants to deny. Just a road, like every other…like no other. It's constant and everything and nothing.

He finally concedes to his body's need to hang it up for a while just outside of Nowhere, Somewhere. Reluctantly checks into a motel. He feels a slew of emotions he ignores; this is a catch-22, the only neutral option being to just lie down on the side of the road somewhere. (Dean doubts he would ever get himself back up from there, if he did that, though.) The bored night clerk slides him the key to room thirteen and as he shoulders his duffel and trudges toward the room, his reserves start to slip with his exhaustion. The details hold back, waiting for their opportune moment to strike, but the _weight _of it. It presses down on him, in on him – his step laden with it, throat tight, chest clenching. It's straight fucked up that just the _thought _hurts so damned bad – he can stand physical pain – a helluva lot more than most, a _hell_uva lot – but this. It's worse than—

_Oh-kay. _So _not going there. No._

As bad as—

_NO._

Just like where—

Dean grits his teeth, bites the inside of his cheek – just breaks skin, a counterpoint to his pain, a distraction so he can forcibly direct himself _away _from that, _there_ (he can handle it at the edge of his thoughts, hovering, gnawing…) – and opens the door. …It's too quiet, too still inside, the only break in it the sound of his compulsorily measured breathing. He slings his duffel hard at the bed, not even consciously realising he's trying to break the suffocating quiet.

_Quiet. …Quiet like that awful moment the ground sealed after Sam-with-Lucifer-as-co-pilot and Michael-wearing-Adam had fallen into the cage. The quiet like that instant of a moment _Sam_ – his Sam, _Sammy _- had looked him in the eye…._

_He could barely see him, one eye swollen completely shut and the other well on the way to the same, offering him the meagre visibility of a blurry sliver. His face was a huge, painful mess, every point bloodied and bruised and throbbing thumped and burned in the shape of his brother's knuckles. That hadn't been his brother, though – wasn't Sam – _that _was Sam, shaggy hair whipping in the wind, in the deafening roar of this mute moment. That was Sammy, standing there, that puppy-doggish pleading-but-not-quite-sorry face he had. The last view Dean had of him before he'd left for Stanford._

_Sammy was leaving him, deliberately, again. 'Cos he had to. _

And Dean didn't want him to, but didn't stop him.

_Shit._

Dean splashes his face with water in the tiny bathroom, forsaking the open room. This glorified closet has the illusion of containment – and he needs to contain himself. He grips the edges of the sink hard enough to imprint, head bowed. He meant to collect himself, pull it together, but that sucking hollow in his chest has opened up, a vacuum for his existence and will, very much like Lucifer's cage, but within him. When he thought he had lost _everything_ – all that was left, pitiful handful that it was, that mattered to him _gone_, leaving him resoundingly **alone**, this sucking hollowness had opened up within him—

He had been so close. Almost let it all go, just caved in. Woulda.

Dean meets his own gaze in the mirror. Intense cat-green eyes stare back, blank and haunted – _haunting _– shining almost translucent grey-green in the harsh light. Open wide, set in his unmarked face, the only trace of his recent hell in the smudges beneath his eyes and his eyes themselves. Not a scratch, or gouge, or bruise and swelling left to illustrate what he felt within, illustrate just what he had given and lost and fought.

Cas had wiped it all away when he'd miraculously returned, hopped up on new-and-improved restored angel mojo. He'd taken it from Dean.

Again, just like with Hell.

The thought scorches sour like acid at the back of his throat, twisting in his stomach. _Fucker. _He had to believe that maybe, maybe if he had some physical trace of Stull – he could take this. It wouldn't just be all in his head. It'd fucking be real, and it'd fucking hurt – pain that he could manage, control, _see._

_Fuck!_

It was the shards crackling as they hit the floor that roused Dean back into the moment and what had just happened. Blood trickling warmly across his balled right hand, familiar – comforting. He'd put his fist through the damned perfect mirror, right into his damned falsely perfect reflection. The shards scattered like shrapnel, twinkling across the dingy tiles and dotted with crimson-sliding-rose red within the basin. Some glass still hung within the metal frame. Green eyes gaze back at him, distorted, disjointed.

_Fractured._

It isn't what he'd been at Stull. Fuck, he's still all angelic-blessedly (fucking cursedly, more like) whole. But at least now there's _something _outside matching his within.

…It's not enough. Not by a far fucking cry. And he can't contemplate – can't fathom what will be. Like every hope he's had, it's probably something he'd just lose anyway.

* * *

_(The lyrics in the page break are from "Winter in My Heart" by VAST.)_


End file.
